Seahorse (18 page)

“That's what I thought too… but now I feel it's the other way round… how a city is changed for you by someone else.”

“As for the timing of fate…” I placed my chopsticks aside, “the measurement of serendipity….”

The latest offering over the speakers began with a melancholic pluck of piano keys.

Whatever else it may be, we decided, fate was not quite as predictable as Cantopop.

Later, our steps followed the streets of China Town as they wove their illicit way into Soho. Half a century ago, it might have been wholesomely disreputable, but the place was touched now by an unmistakeable orchestration. Girls at doorways in corsets and pantyhose, lurid signs at sex shop display windows and strip clubs—arranged as sets for a movie, or an extravagant performance for visitors. We walked faster, keen to get away, passing the Windmill Theatre with its red neon lights, scars in the surrounding darkness.

“I don't feel like going home yet… do you?” said Eva. “Shall we walk by the river?”

The Embankment was almost all ours; the chill of the evening had driven people indoors or away from the breezy banks of the Thames.
All along, lights glimmered on the water like fallen stars. Across the river, the London eye made a bright, angel-white circle against the sky.

“Did it make you sad?” she asked. “That last song…”

Something about the moment would have made it wrong to lie.

“Her voice did something similar,” I said.

She stayed silent, her breath releasing as winter mist.

I felt my admission might prompt something similarly confidential from her, that she would begin to explain why the song was still on her mind. There was space for it, a gap in the air, waiting for her words.

Instead, she placed her gloved hand into the crook of my arm, and we strolled on.

We were near Tower Hill now, close to Trinity Square with its giant white memorials and garden. To our left, the tower complex hunkered in a silent splendour, its ramparts and turrets glowing under the gaze of strategically-placed lights.

“Would it be alright,” Eva asked hesitantly, “if we could drop by your place?”

She'd like to use the loo, please, and request a taxi pick-up from there. It was too late now to take the tube.

We cut across through Seething Lane, past its odd jumble of steel-glass façades and graceful arched Victorian doorways. The church gateway was chained and locked; the garden beyond it lost in darkness. I let her into my building, flicked on the light, a little embarrassed by the place. I wished the carpet was newer, the walls more freshly painted, and the strange mushroom-damp odor be magically eliminated. “This,” she said as she stepped into my tiny studio, “is charming.”

She deposited her coat and bag on the chair; I pulled out another, unused, from the corner. I hadn't had guests over yet; it was always easier to meet elsewhere.

“Wine?” I offered, as she exited the bathroom.

“Why not?”

She picked up the concert ticket from the table and inspected it. “You're going to Lauderdale? I've been there once… it's a lovely place.”

“Yes… I'm meeting an old friend.”

“I haven't heard of this quartet… do you know who they are?”

I shook my head. She gestured to my computer—“May I?”—and typed quickly, without looking at the keyboard. “Here we are… no… I don't know them…” Gently, she shut the laptop. Next to it, stood the jade ox; she picked it up and placed it on her palm, stroking its curved horns, its smooth nose. “It's beautiful.”

“I found it… many years ago. In a friend's house.”
In a room with no clocks, no calendars.

“The same friend?” she asked. “The one you went with for a walk in the forest.”

The wine blazed down my throat, through my chest.

“No… he passed away.”

“I'm sorry.” She looked wounded that she'd asked the question.

“It was a long time ago…”

She placed her hand on my shoulder, lightly. A small gesture I'll always carry.

“I noticed you too were quiet after the song…” I ventured.

She swirled her glass, the wine sloshing to the top. For a while, she stayed silent, watching the blink of a helicopter move across the London sky, a pinprick of red-white light.

“Two years ago, when Stefan left for Beirut, people would ask me how I was doing, and I'd tell them this silly little Japanese folktale…”

“Which one?”

“The one about Tanabata. Have you heard of it? The story goes that Orihime, daughter of the Sky King, wove cloth by the bank of the Milky Way… the heavenly river. Then she met Hikoboshi, a cow herder, who lived on the other side, and they fell in love, and were married. But now she no longer wove for her father, so in anger, he separated the
two lovers across the river… until, moved by his daughter's grief, he allowed them to meet on the seventh day of the seventh month. The first time, they couldn't cross because there was no bridge. Orihime cried so hard that a flock of magpies flew down and promised to build one with their wings. They say if it rains on Tanabata, the magpies cannot come and the two lovers must wait another year to meet. Then I'd smile and say, ‘I'm waiting for the magpies.'” She sipped deeply from her glass. “Nauseating, isn't it?”

I was about to protest when she added, “Especially since I think there'll no longer be a need for magpies.”

Avian or not, this was the closest she'd come to talking with me about her relationship with Stefan. Aided, perhaps, by the mingling of a multitude of beverages through the evening, but also something I hadn't noticed before. A quiet sadness. What, I asked cautiously, did she mean?

“It's hard to imagine sometimes, but it wasn't always this way… Stefan and I lived in London… we were happy.” She said it simply, as though there was nothing else to add, that the word, by itself, contained everything. “Then he lost his job, and after ages found this one. A six-month contract to begin with… which seemed like nothing, really. Then, it was extended. And again. And yet again. He was meant to be back end of this year, but a few months ago, he called… and it was the same old story… He said he knew this wasn't what we wanted or planned, but with things being the way they are… and we're talking about jobs in journalism here… he felt he had little choice. Except it means he'll be away six more months. People wonder why I don't move to Beirut, but how can we plan such things when our lives move in half-yearly instalments like some sort of terrible repayment plan?”

“Would you like to move to Beirut?”

She shrugged. “I liked visiting the city… I don't know. My life is here.”

“And his?” I asked.

“Here… or at least it used to be. Now… and it's understandable… I'm not so sure.” The glass she held was empty, but she hadn't noticed. “Before he left the first time, he promised to send me a reminder each week, to mark the passing of time…”

I said I'd seen the lilies; they were beautiful.

“It was romantic, at first, even exhilarating… now they feel like a notch on a prison wall.”

I struggled, and failed, to find appropriate words. Did this call for anger? Or commiseration?
I know what it feels like to be left behind.

“I imagine,” I said feebly, “it isn't easy.”

“No,” she said, staring hard at the floor. “But not for the reasons you imagine…”

In a moment, like a trick of light, her face had rearranged. Banished, that quiet sadness. Replaced by something more circumspect. She stood up briskly, as though that space, the chair, was tainted, and moved to the window. In her green dress, she looked like a slender leaf. She spoke softly, almost to herself.

“Not
only
for the reasons you imagine…”

“Is there something else?” I couldn't bring myself to say “someone.”

I couldn't see her face, but her voice was small and tense. “I don't know…” Then she turned, suddenly vehement, “No, to think that is to demean it…”

She paced the length of my studio; she hadn't far to cover. “How hard I tried, Nem… I avoided them all, those casual meetings… you know, to invert a Japanese proverb, burn your house to rid it of mice… careful not to place myself in situations where… well… things
may
happen…” She stopped and laughed. “At one point, I even turned down drinks with Santanu.”

In my mind, I tried to discern a face, who it was that she could have met, but it remained misted.